New $7M plant for Nanisivik
Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services
Nanisivik (Jan 22/01) - A multi-million dollar project at Nanisivik could extend the life of the Baffin base-metal mine.
Owner Breakwater Resources is spending $7 million on what's known as a dense media separation plant.
The new plant will "reduce operating costs and allow us to mine lower-grade ore," Nanisivik general manager Ron Light said Thursday.
"(The new infrastructure) has the potential to extend the life of the mine," said Light, adding that it would be premature to estimate by how much.
Asked if processing more ore would not shorten the life of the mine, Light said some of the material that will undergo dense media separation is lower grade and not included in reserve figures on which the mine life has been based.
Nanisivik's measured, indicated at inferred resources is about 4.5 million tonnes of ore.
Currently, Nanisivik's reserves are enough to keep the mine going until some time in 2004.
Anticipated startup of the new plant, built by Nova Scotia's Leroy Su Corp., is mid May.
"It is a very tight schedule and every thing is pretty much on schedule."
In dense media separation, heavier wanted particles sink while lighter unwanted waste floats.
The waste is then skimmed off the slurry and the remaining material is ready for processing.
The result of dense media separation is a decrease in the amount of waste entering the process plant and that lowers the cost of recovering zinc, Light said.
"We should be able to take the feed grade from 6.6 per cent zinc to about eight per cent," he said. The next step is processing feed grade into zinc concentrate.
Currently, Nanisivik produces about 105,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate. Adding the new plant will increase that amount, but by how much remains to be seen.
As well, Nanisivik could up the amount of ore processed to 1.1 million tonnes from about 800,000 tonnes.
Light also said this is the first time dense media separation will be used at a base-metal mine in the Arctic. The process is well-known in the North's diamond-mining sector. It also has been used in coal mining.
Light adds test work has shown dense media separation is viable at Nanisivik.
"We're very confident the process will work fine for us."
